Many network communication protocols have been defined over the years based on particular situations, such as for large-scale networks, localized networks, proprietary networks, and, in particular, industrial automation networks. For instance, the PROFINET protocol is one such example of a protocol designed primarily for industrial automation. However, the PROFINET protocol itself has very limited security measures, such as the Frame ID (used for detecting and identifying communication relations), and the Cycle Counter (representing a security function to a certain extent because it used to monitor the I/O data exchange). Owing to the lack of further security provisions, many industrial automation protocols, particularly PROFINET (and even more particularly the discovery and configuration protocol (DCP) portion of PROFINET), are vulnerable to spoofing and man-in-the-middle (MIM) related security threats.